A raucous crowd at McCamish Pavilion, announced at 7,185, turned up the volume for what was likely the last time this season in Georgia Tech’s 61-52 win over Pittsburgh Tuesday night. Coach Josh Pastner offered his thanks and appreciation for fans’ support Tuesday and this season and gave a picture of what he envisions in the future.
“The crowd’s been great,” Pastner said. “I think what it shows is what the city, people at Georgia Tech, fans – they appreciate teams that move the ball and play hard and give a great effort. I think Georgia Tech’s all about being a blue-collar work ethic type of school. And we’re not ranked, we’re not in position to win the regular season of the ACC, but for people to keep coming like they’re doing, in year one of a rebuild, it says a lot. And the fans that helped us so much to win us games, and I really hope this ending, people will really get on board next year.”
Tech’s home average attendance for the nine ACC games was 7,198. It was 6,978 last year, a modest improvement but noteworthy considering the low expectations for the season.
“I want people, when they ask other coaches what the hardest place to play is, I want them to say McCamish (Pavilion),” Pastner said. “And we’ve got to get to that. We’ve got to get McCamish to be able to have that with the fans and everything else. I don’t know what we’ll call it. We can’t call it the Thrillerdome because that’s already been there. Maybe we need a new name, or we call it the Thrillerdome II. But we’ll come up with something. We’ll let (sports information director Mike Stamus) decide that.”
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